11–20 of 52 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess that "computer that is identical to a Macbook Air" is key here: it means the current Air's power. That would probably be a mainframe in those days?
I'm not sure that such a thing existed.
Um, I doubt this, very very much. The Air has a 50 W/h battery. That's 50W for a full hour. So if they are saying that it would last 2.5 seconds, that means the putative 1990s computer would have to consume 60 x 24 x 50 = 72,000 Watts! Someone at the Atlantic needs to figure out basic math.
I read it to mean they were factoring in the computing power as well. i.e. they estimated that it would take 72,000 Watts-worth of 1990s computers to match the processing power of a Macbook Air. Though that does add further caveats to an already less-than-ideal comparison (as an MBA is not going to last seven hours at 100% CPU load).
If they are going to compare it with computational power, they should also factor in battery development since 1990.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it to mean they were factoring in the computing power as well. i.e. they estimated that it would take 72,000 Watts-worth of 1990s computers to match the processing power of a Macbook Air. Though that does add further caveats to an already less-than-ideal comparison (as an MBA is not going to last seven hours at 100% CPU load).
Sounds like they ought to mention how long that is in football fields.
Still, not a bad yardstick to see how far we've come with respect to computing power per watt - maybe this is why the rate of change is increasing more than exponentially - you have multiple exponential rates converging in a positive feedback system...
We'd definitely all be driving electric cars today if that happened.
The best (commercial) batteries today are only a few times better than the ones used in electric cars 100 years ago.
A Model 100 was pretty much the opposite of the iPad: great for creative activities (writing, taking notes, programming) but poor for consumption activities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like they ought to mention how long that is in football fields.
Or even better, compare it to a butterfly flapping its wings ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect ) as this kind of comparison is sensitive to so many different factors you can't take any conclusions too seriously. Still, not a bad yardstick to see how far we've come with respect to computing power per watt - maybe this is why the rate of change is increasing more than exponentially - you have multiple exp…
Doesn't seem so. Classic Moore : 7h (25200s) / 2.5s ~= 2^14 that places us in - 1.5 years for a power of 2 - 1990.
>more than exponentially - you have multiple exponential rates converging in a positive feedback system...
not really. The system as whole improves with the same exponential rate precisely because all and each of its components improves with the same exponential rate. Exponential rate of CPU and exponential rate of RAM produce the same one exponential rate of the improvement of the whole system comprised of the CPU and the RAM. Exponential rate of the CPU only, for example, would result in much less than the exponential rate for the whole system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that such a thing existed.
It's not a fair comparison. A 90s mainframe would probably smoke an Air if they were competing on IOPS with a thousand connected users!
So while, Mainframe software is vary efficent the hardware still sucked compared to modern systems. Just think a 1GBit/second Fible Channel did not show up until 1997 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel.
PS: The #5 super computer in June 1993 had 4 cores Processor NEC 400 MHz (6.4 GFlops). http://www.top500.org/system/377 A 999$ mackbook air uses a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor that would crush it in large part due to that 3 MB L3 cache but also due to being able to do far more in of those cycles.
so if someone could make a 68030 as efficient as an i5, I could have a PowerBook 170 that would run for a week on a charge? Yes, please . ( I'll need someone to knock up a Twitter reading client in MPW too, pls)